All things Perpetually Thoughtful

Tag Archives: strong female characters

A post came out in the NewStatesmen today by Sophia McDougall called “I Hate Strong Female Characters.” A lot of you may have already seen it. It’s been shared by lots of people I know, I’ve seen links from several sources show up on my dash, and I RTedit myself earlier today.

I highly recommend you read it for yourself, but the gist of it is that Hollywood has taken the call for “more strong female characters” to mean that we literally want strong female characters. That THAT is the way to combat the stereotypical female characters that have always existed in Hollywood movies (i.e. damsel in distress, sexy eye candy, etc.) and provide appropriate representation for women in films and television (though this is much more a problem you see in movies than TV). Moreover, that the public also often misinterprets the idea of wanting “strong female characters” to mean this, and that male characters (protagonists in particular) are not held to this same intensely literal meaning when categorized as strong male characters. Male protagonists are allowed be a number of different, varying things, and strong in ways that may not always include or highlight physical (or mental or emotional) strength. And the post also brings up perhaps the worst offense of all, that female characters categorized as SFCs are often shown displaying excessive amounts of strength or physical aggression towards men in ways that would cause us as an audience to recoil if the roles were reversed and it was a man acting that way to a woman — the reason being that the audience assumes (or the people behind the film assume the audience assumes) the female character is “weak” until it is unequivocally proven otherwise, something the male characters don’t have to prove.

The article really covers everything, and I agree with it so very much, but this is something I’ve been thinking about incessantly for the past year or two, both in my writing and in watching things, so I’m gonna talk about it because it’s my tumblr and I want to.

An awesome article on the difference between ‘strong female’ characters and ‘strong characters’, female that I found while searching for reviews of HBO’s GIRLS to validate my new found love for it (only 4 episodes left, sob).

The idea that its okay to have only one type of female character so long as they are ‘strong’ should be obviously ridiculous if you take about two minutes to think about it. What we want are girls who are weak and strong and messed up and funny and vindictive and cruel and kind and loving and clever and dull and impassioned and bored and independent and needy. We want all types of girls in our stories, and we want them to be up front and center some of the time, and supporting characters and villains and heroes and best friends. Most of all we want girls who are lots of things, who are complex and unique and likeable and inconsiderate and selfish and charming and weak. All of it.

Changing the flat characterization of women as half the species isn’t really progress, and if you think it is, you probably haven’t thought about it much.